The Personal Cost of Small Budgets & Underfunded Libraries: Out-of-Pocket Spending by School Librarians during COVID-19

This study examined how school librarians spent their own money to support their libraries during the 2020–2021 school year in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the various factors that influence this spending. Using mixed methods, this study identified demographic information about the participants and schools served, personal spending practices, perspectives on the need for personal spending, and local school policies related to library funding that impacted out-of-pocket spending. The major findings of this study indicate that school librarians used their own money to purchase books, decorations, prizes, office supplies, and cleaning supplies. Librarians used their own money to meet student needs, to get what was needed quickly and conveniently, to obtain items for which they were not allowed to spend school money, and to avoid dealing with time-consuming purchasing and reimbursement processes—if reimbursement was even an option. School librarians also spent their own money because library budgets were eliminated, reduced, or frozen during the pandemic. In addition, school librarians who spent the most of their own money worked in rural areas with a higher proportion of students who qualify for free/reduced lunch. School librarians who were over 60, unmarried, or had lower library budgets spent more of their own money on their libraries than did other study participants. © 2022, American Library Association. All rights reserved.

Vulnerability, social triage and the COVID-19 pandemic

If we are concerned about managing pandemics better, we need to secure and ameliorate the lives of all vulnerable people, including those with disabilities, people of colour, immigrants, seniors, and low-income essential workers who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Before the pandemic even started, these groups had been “triaged” away from care by their social and economic circumstances, where structural features of their lives made them more susceptible to the physical dangers of COVID-19. This commentary article argues that the social determinants of health (SDOH) must be taken into account to create better living and working conditions for our most vulnerable citizens. By adopting a macroscopic perspective that re-examines cultural biases, safety regulations, labour laws, building codes, urban-planning and socio-economic policies, our society will be better equipped to weather global pandemics or other crises in the future. © 2021, University of Toronto. All rights reserved.